Letter to You --The Missing Summer of 2011

Part One: Cry Agony! Cry Dreams!

I'm sure at least one of my regular three readers might be interested in game design, so here is a tidal wave of typos, a glacial wall of English glyphs: here is a very long letter about what I've done, and where I've been for the last three months.

When I was growing up, there was one company that shone above the others: Wizards of the Coast. A start up by a guy named Peter Adkison, they published Magic:The Gathering, and eventually they bought the rights to Dungeons & Dragons. I looked up to this company almost more than any other entity when I was a kid.

Now that I have pretended to grow up, I don't find as much time to play games. mostly because I'm obsessed with making my own. To quickly recap the last few years of my life: I invented something extraordinary, and I haven't had the time, inclination, or resources to do something with the idea. I have stacks of index cards and lots of scary notes kept safely in several moleskine notebooks...but I've never been really sure what you do with a game after you make it. How the fuck do you publish a game?

I knew who I needed. Or what sort of person would point me in the right path. I needed Peter Adkison: Mr. The Warlock himself, the guy who had founded Wizards of the Coast. I found his new company on the internet... Hidden City Entertainment. I checked the web page a lot. Too much, in fact. it was obvious they weren't taking on new projects, in fact the entire page seemed to be set up to publish the worldwide right for some Norwegian pony game. So I spent a few more months thinking of my game, wandering around vacant lots, just thinking about my game. Driving myself insane.

And then one day, I wrote a nice long letter to Mr. The Warlock, and guessed his email address on the sixth try. We decided to meet at Gen Con...which was three months away.

And then, I realized I didn't actually have a game to show him. I had a concept, and some papers and index cards.

Part 2: How I spent my Summer Vacation

The problem, of course, is when I sent my email...I didn't actually have a game to show anyone. I mean, I DID...but it was...well, it wasn't the Sort of Thing you showed to other people. I've seen war photos that looked a bit more proper.

So I set to work. I took out all my notes (mourning the ones I had lost over the years) and I began to pick my way through the terrible prototypes I had already made.

Woe to those who saw me in those first feral weeks! Unshaven, eyes wide, and fingers covered in ink from writing and rewriting notes. I looked insane. I felt insane. Time was ticking and my game needed a lot of work to be assembled.


After about a week I began to photoshop. It took a straight week of laptop design to get everything looking moderately not scary. I wanted to impress this bastard, not just hand him something functional. So I began creating something you could publish. I contacted almost anyone I knew who could draw, including my cousin Lauren, who I liked a lot, and had a deviant art page, so why not?

Like I said, it took a week, which culminated in me, driving to my buddy Sakroka's house, out in the middle of shit-nowhere, and attempting to teach him the game. it was all very impressive looking, and superbly clever in its mechanics.

Tragedy struck when Sakroka told me it wasn't actually very fun.

I drove home and nursed a beer in the living room while I chatted with him over the phone. "It's not bad!" he kept saying, "it's got some great ideas, it just needs work..it's not bad"
I cringed every time he said it. It felt like someone trying to cheer me up after particularly bad sex. "Nah, that would have been great, if not for that bit in the middle"

By the time he got off the phone, I knew I was fucked. fucked. fucked. fucked.

So.

My pride wounded, shattered, and abandoned, I began to Photoshop. I began to write notes. I taped a calendar to my wall and managed not to fuck that up too. I had two months left to start over from scratch and create something that shone with the light of the north star.


The game had four parts at that point. Four separate things I had to create which all shared ideas and mechanics. And I hadn't even figured out how the first part worked.

I was so fucked.

I slogged through another week of photoshopping. Building an entirely new version of the game. And then, all of a sudden...

--An errant thought, loosed from perhaps the bow of providence itself: "YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THIS"--I dropped everything. I stopped the version was working on, and immediately starting scribbling notes and rough pieces for something special. A fifth part of the game. Something to pull all the possibilities together and give it a strong and proper SPINE.

My heart shone with a new luster, my fingers danced on a rhythm of wonder. God had put me on earth to draw the ideas I was drawing. Every new thought was a seed that I scattered into a field of wooden tabletop.

Weeks went by. I made another play-date with Sakroka. I printed the game at Kinko's and spent a very long time cutting it at the library--once a haunt for this very novelist, now a shining fortress of game design--Sakroka and I ate a wonderful lunch of Chinese (our usual) and invited his brother-in-law John to come over and play the New! Fun! Amazing! version of The Game.

...I had created a masterpiece.

Sakroka sat us down at an abandoned pool table in the middle of his mother's home. A very old house you would only find in the South. The best memory of that day is John's son watching us, and then retreating to the dining room to draw his own game.


After I watched them play, we retreated to the porch and smoked cigarettes (at this point, five weeks into game design, I had picked up smoking and ran with it like I was winning a relay race with cancer)We talked about what worked, and what didn't. And how amazed we all were at how much fun the game was...We had seen a possible future, glimpsed in the kinko printed cards in our hands...I sat there shaking and taking wide-eyed drags at my cigarette, like a small boy who had just seen breasts and couldn't stop talking about the possibilities of them.

More time passed. Days and calendars winking and waving as they ran away from me.

I went back and forth from Kinko's to the library. I listened to music. A lot of music.

I scoured Michael's craft-store for things I can turn into mock-up packaging. And I kept working on the game. On the second part. And the third part. I played it myself, and was amazed that i had not entirely fucked this up. It was fun. it was a fun. fucking. game.

And then, something incredible happened: None of the artists could help. none of them.

Except, my eighteen year old cousin Lauren.

She began to send me pictures, ideas, and sketches. each new picture was better than the last.

And finally she drew me, (quite by honest accident) a cover for the box:

Beautiful. Gorgeous. Perfect. Any good part of any adjective belonged on a gold plaque underneath her pictures, which belonged, in my humble opinion, in a god-damn museum.

More days passed. More nights passed. Exhaustion became my only living. I remember eating dinner by myself in the middle of the night, because I had to wait for Kinko's to finish printing all my crazy shit. Shout out to the guy who works third shift and looks like a wizard, his understanding of double-sided cardstock printing was nothing more than magic.

Sakroka and I spent one last Saturday playing the game for a full five hours straight. We needed to make sure all the pieces worked. And yes, they certainly did!

I finished my final list (sharpied onto a piece of errant styrofoam) and finally, my calendar had filled up with black X marks, and I found myself at the end of July, staring straight ahead into the yellow eyes of Gen Con.

Part 3: Gen Con, Seat of the Gods

Two days before the con I had the worst night of my life. I can't talk about it here. And I wouldn't, regardless. Someone sat me down, and told me news that broke my heart. I spent the night sleeping across from my finished game, and awoke bawling my eyes out.

It was the worst night of my life, until the rest of the week hit.

Thursday evening I stopped by Sakroka's and showed everyone there (they have D & D night every Thursday) the final packaging and everything. I can't really put into words how nice everyone was, or how much I needed it.

The next morning, Sakroka and I drove to Indianapolis. It didn't take as long as I would have imagined. Though I think each other's taste in music might have made it longer. On the way up we talked about the terrible thing happening in my life. And we talked of other things too; always circling the dark storm that caused my eyes to look bloodshot and watering the entire trip.

At the hotel I kept checking the bag to make sure my game was safe and not somehow ripped, or on fire. My meeting was the very next day, at 10 in the morning, so Sakroka and I decided to go ahead and check out the con...get a lay of the land and etc.

Imagine the biggest thing ever, and then imagine something bigger. Now fill it with lots of people who are just like you. That is what a con is. The best part of the entire day was when he ripped his pants in half while sword fighting a bunch of other dudes.

That night he made me drive to the nearest (and I use the term loosely) Wal-Mart just so he could buy what I think he thought was a decent pair of jeans. On the way there (it was a long drive) we listened to different songs from Final Fantasy, on the way back, which took a lot longer (we got very lost) we talked about what I was going through, as we drove through the dark of foreign highways, the tragedy now at the center of my thoughts.

We eventually fond a gas station, and a very nonreputable looking (and tasting) Denny's. At this point it was probably well past midnight. I scarfed down something that almost looked like food, and we retired to our hotel across the street.

And then it happened.

Sakroka couldn't stop snoring. And coughing. Did I mention he was sick? Yep. He looked (for the most part) like he was about to die at any given moment. I kept telling him he was going to be patient zero at the con. And we would laugh. oh, how we would laugh!

No one was laughing anymore. It was 2 AM, my life was falling apart (the tragedy) and I had to get up in five hours for my meeting. My mind just stopped working at that point. This isn't happening. Satan, can you hear me? Strike my friend down with your dark power...

I woke up with three hours of sleep. At one point, I had tried to sleep in the bathtub, but to no avail. Sakroka said good morning, and I told him I was going to kill him.

We drove into town and parked at the con. I was meeting Peter at the Starbucks in the Westin, so Sakroka and I split apart and he waved to me as he walked toward the convention center. I decided I best get a coffee, and accidentally stood in line behind--of course--Mr. The Warlock himself, the man I was meeting with in an hour. He was very cordial, in a sleepy I had a drink last night but hello, sort of way. He invited me to meet him up in his penthouse suite (did I mention he owned the convention?) in about an hour. I gave him a nod, said a few dumb jokes I don't remember, and set to work sipping my coffee while trying not to freak the fuck out.

...but it was at that point, at 9:15ish in the morning, that my mind just broke.

It wasn't the meeting. Or the sleep. Or my life falling apart just two night before. It was everything. It was my whole life culminating up to this sick and single moment. The nervous, fat, socially shut-in game designer who was clicking a button to go up the elevator and have a MEETING with the guy who created his childhood.

But I found that god damn door, the penthouse entrance, tucked away in the corner of the top floor. And I knocked on it, and I did NOT throw-up. Or shit myself, or explode in a cloud of nervous bats.

Mr. The Warlock answered the door and was funny, and charming, and excited. I showed him my game right away, and pretended that I hadn't forgotten half the rules. He thanked me for taking the time to work on not just a game, but the look of it as well, and said some other nice stuff I would only tell you in person. We played the game for a few minutes, and he took the time to look at the art, and read the words I had written on certain pieces.

The entire event was capsized when he told me he would be interested in publishing the game, if his company had not just closed its doors, perhaps only days earlier.

He gave me a list of companies and publishers I should meet with, shooed me out the door, and I spent the rest of the day hustling, attempting to pitch my game to any company I could find.

Sakroka and I drove home, the weight of everything upon us. As we got closer to Nashville, the game faded from memory, and the tragedy my life had become enveloped the last two hours of the car and left us in silence.

When I got home, the bad news had progressed, and I cried harder that night then I ever had in my life.

-mE.

Postscript:

Sorry about that, I had to go pull a cigarette after getting through that last part. It took me two weeks just to make myself write it. (I hope you didn't read the entire entry in a sitting--my apologies!--Life since Gen Con, the tragedy, and Kinko's expensive printing has been strange.

Good and bad mixed in with a lot of blood and terror. (Metaphorical on most account, I can assure you). My life has fallen apart. I am as anxious and confused as ever, and find myself scratching off moments of my life, like Edmund trying to scratch off his scales.

My life is different now. And not for nothing but I have the best Aunt any sad little boy could ask for. Her name is Cindy. Almost everyone I know has been very kind during my ongoing period of grief. I even found a possible publisher for my game, but is another story, for another night, when the stars shine bright and the black clouds are gone past the horizon.